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By my own record and my family's, I am probably one of the best cooks in my family.
(Although my younger brother, Justin - The Professional Sous Chef - would beg to differ...)
Nonetheless, I never thought I would EVER have a complaint about my cooking.
And then I started dating black men...
👋 Hey Fam-lei 👋
Lady XO here!
And THIS topic in relationships is almost NEVER spoken about in any blog I've read or podcast I have listened to.
I want to FIRST say, NO...
This is NOT going to be a post about my recipes...
(although if you'd like any, I'm all for exchanging some 👉happywifenappylife@gmail.com)
THIS is a post about compatibility and why cooking does matter when you're thinking of being in an interracial relationship.
I explain...
Cooking can be just as intimate of an expression of love as a hug can be at times.
It's that warm feeling you get when someone who cares about you - THINKS about you, prepares something (made with love) and warms your belly with it...
No greater act of servitude is shown more CONSISTENTLY in a household than the act of cooking.
It's done 3X a day... (For some of you super-mom-Martha-Stewart-types out there)
If it's ENJOYED, it can be seen and felt by the cook as a moment of appreciation, and by the family as a moment of joyful gathering.
If it IS NOT ENJOYED; however, it can be seen and felt by the cook as a moment of UNAPPRECIATIVE shame... and the family, a moment of dread...
"We gotta eat rice... AGAIN??
Sis... this used to be a regular comment made to me by most other black men that I would date before meeting my husband...
Accompanied by a look of annoyance...
Resulting in an argument about feeling unappreciated...
And... Well, eventual break-up...
(YESSSSSSSSS girl, it has gotten that SERIOUS before)
But this was back in the days before social media...
Before the "age of instant gratification"...
BEFORE YouTube and TikTok chefs and tutorials existed...
A time when you had to get a cook book or talk to "the cook" in the family to get new recipes...
But I am the cook in my family...
And there's NOTHING wrong with rice!!!
So, as you can guess...
Those guys didn't make the cut.
It's not that I didn't know how to cook anything else.
8Heck, I had a whole international cook book of recipes in my brain...
Anything a guy could want...
But........
I. Am. Chamorro.
And brotha!!! We. Eat. Rice!!!
I may have made a few adjustments to the menu prior, but rice is a huge part of my culture and most men didn't want to compromise, they wanted it their way.
To me, it was almost as if those men were turned off and annoyed completely by MY being...
Because, stupid me...
I equated 💕 REAL LOVE 💕 with loving everything about that person.
And since I was an island girl in TEXAS of all places, I placed it in my head that if you didn't like my food, you didn't really like all of ME.
By the way, none of the guys I dated ever had a complaint about the way their food tasted...
They always loved my cooking.
Loved it so much that they just wanted what THEY wanted...
God bless their All-Texan-Meat-And-Potatoes-Eating ❤️ hearts! It wasn't their fault they were raised to believe that potatoes are considered a vegetable.
(Some of you are like; "Wait, they're NOT"?!)
😆 LOL
It's quite alright hunnay...
Where I am from, the staples were seafood, rice, and vegetables. Where I was living in Texas; the staples were beef, pork, corn and potatoes.
Talk about a different world.
When I met my husband, it was like he was custom-built for me.
He was a brotha born in California, and raised in the Bayou... A Cajun boy with a southern swag who LOVED rice with every meal!
One of his favorite stories to tell people is of the first time that I cooked for him and made rice out of a POT. He fell in love immediately because he didn't expect someone so young to be able to cook so "old school". (Remember ladies, he's born in 72', and I, in 83'... That's a 12 year age gap!)
I tell you ladies...
Be careful what you wish for because this man eats more rice than even THIS island girl does!
NOW, I'm the one who's like...
"You want rice AGAIN, boo? I mean, can tonight be PASTA night?"
😆
And now we have an eleven year old son that LOVES rice so much he is TRULY saddened if we cook anything else for dinner.
But I wouldn't have it any other way...
And not to say that if a guy doesn't like your cooking, it won't work out.
But it does avoid alot of petty disagreements that can add up to divorce when you DO have these certain similarities in common.
Listen, nobody ever thinks about the fact that; if the saying is true and "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach", then a woman has literally three opportunities a day to get to a man's heart...
Three blessed opportunities to leave a mark INSIDE of him...
Inside of his soul, he is reminded of his times of being cared for as a young boy by his mother... The feeling of security that he received knowing he was LOVED.
Inside of his body, you have the opportunity to activate his pleasure senses.
Filling his nose with smells that remind him of a loving home...
Filling his stomach and giving him that warm and calming feeling...
All these things that literally release endorphins within the body and create feelings of PLEASURE.
And you can do this MAGICAL VOODOO three times a DAY, Queens!!!
IF you can handle it!
If you love him, it's NOT a chore...
If he loves YOU, he will match that energy and want to cook for you as well (if he has the skillset, that is).
But think about it,
What if he DOESN'T like your food?
Then it's the complete OPPOSITE of those emotions.
And three times a day, seven days a week for a total of 84 times a month; he has to ENDURE your cooking?
And feel annoyed or incomplete and have to stifle those thoughts 84 times a month for a total of 1008 chances a year for an argument to occur?
And you've been together for 3 years now!
You've just given this man 3,000 opportunities to wonder if another woman could do a better job...
Sounds harsh?
But it's the REAL...
And if you think for one instant that your man isn't looking at his buddy JOHN'S food pics on Facebook and wondering if life would be different for him... If ONLY...
You're in a dream land sis...
And you need to wake up and get online and figure some stuff out...
Heck, I learned to fry chicken the way my husband likes it, because dang it!
I'm married to a man who loves his Mama's fried chicken recipe!
It's how I create a feeling of HOME for him.
The same way the food critic on the Disney movie "Ratatouille" was immediately brought back to his childhood when he tasted the familiarity of his mother's food through the mouse's culinary ability. Seen in this clip.
Truth be told, there is power in our femininity and cooking has always been seen as an act of maternal nurturing.
It's a love language of its own...
And I encourage you all to have fun learning new love languages...
This weekend, I wanted to speak in ITALIAN and cook some Chicken Parmesan for my husband.
Which is basically just fried chicken again but this time with PASTA! 😘😉😜
SEE? We compromise!
Hahahaha...
Until next time fam-lei!
HAPPY wife, Nappy Life!!!
✌️Two-Doze✌️
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